London LASER 07
Tuesday 17 February 2015
6.30 - 9.00pm (registration from 6pm)
D115/117, Central Saint Martins, University
of the Arts London, 1 Granary Square,
Kings Cross, London
N1C 4AA
The seventh
London LASER evening of talks at the intersection of art and science hosts interdisciplinary
curator and writer Bronac Ferran, scholar
and artist Timothy J Senior, and
kinetic light sculptor Paul Friedlander,
guest chaired by Laura Plana Gracia.
The event is free but booking is essential: eventbrite link to go here
Bronac Ferran is a curator, researcher
and writer who works at the interfaces between arts, science,
technologies and other disciplines. She set up and led the Interdisciplinary
Arts Department at Arts Council England until 2007 and established numerous
national and international partnerships and initiatives including the Arts
Council England/AHRC Art and Science Research Fellowships Programme and the
ACE/RSA Arts and Ecology initiative. She has been on juries for Transmediale
(2009) and Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts (2009 & 2010) and a Senior Tutor
Research at the Royal College of Art. In 2012 she curated 'Poetry Language
Code' and in 2015 is co-curating 'Graphic Constellations: Visual
Poetry & the Properties of Space' at the Ruskin Gallery in
Cambridge. Her presentation draws on two texts, 'Mind Over Media'
commissioned by the RCA, FACT and Liverpool University Press in 2013 and
'Neuromorphobia' to be published by Archive Books Berlin
(ed.Warren Neidich) later this year based on her talk at the
'Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism'
conference, Goldsmiths, 2014. boundaryobject.org @floatingstones
Dr Timothy J. Senior is a scholar and artist,
currently serving as a Knowledge Exchange Researcher for the Arts and Humanities
Research Council. His work asks how contemporary forms of practice in the arts,
sciences and humanities might be opened up to new collaborative influences.
Following his D.Phil. in Systems Neuroscience (Oxford 2008), he has explored
these issues through an artist residency at Duke University (US) and visiting
lectureships at Jacobs University Bremen (Germany) spanning the arts,
neuroscience, digital humanities, and the social and political sciences. In
2012 he was awarded a Junior Fellowship at the Hanse Institute for Advanced
Study, concluding with an internationally-oriented conference and exhibition on
performative methods in scientific practice. Tim will be taking up this theme
in his talk, exploring how performance-based methods may revolutionize the
study of complex systems and our understanding of disciplinary research.
Paul Friedlander is an independent kinetic
light sculptor and scientific artist based in London. He will give a telescopic
talk on his career spanning more than 40 years from his early influence by
Cybernetic art, his involvement with stage lighting for avant-garde music and
subsequent development of his unique artistic media. The talk will be followed
by a performance with hand held kinetic sculptures and chromastrobic light, a
form of light he invented. Paul studied physics and mathematics at Sussex
University and fine art at Exeter Art College. His youthful ambitions to become
a cosmologist have continued to influence his art, exploring mathematical and
scientific ideas in light. Some of his earliest work was based on catastrophe
theory and chaos. He has a continuing interest in waves, creating many kinetic
works using their mathematics in custom software he writes as part of his
hybrid art.
Guest
chaired by researcher and curator, Laura
Plana Gracia.
LASER is a
program of evening gatherings, which bring together eclectic guest speakers
working at the intersections of art, science and technology. Running
successfully in the US for several years, London LASER is the first of the
series to take place in Europe. Free of charge and open to the public, London
LASER encourages lively discussion in an informal academic setting. London LASER is hosted by University of the
Arts London (Central Saint Martins MA Art and Science and Lens) and University
of Westminster (Broad Vision art/science research and learning and CREAM), in
association with Leonardo/ISAST (the International Society for Art, Science and
Technology). LASER is a project of Leonardo® /ISAST.